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A proposed climate accord for airlines is likely to attract support from enough nations to cover about 80 percent of global emissions from international flights, a senior U.S. State Department official said in an interview.

The draft agreement adopted Friday by the governing council of the United Nation’s aviation agency would initially be voluntary yet has support from nations responsible for most aviation emissions, including the U.S., China and members of the Europe Union, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are private.

Market-Based System

The accord would take effect in 2020. It was brokered last week at a meeting convened by the Civil Aviation Organization’s president, Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu of Nigeria, and attended by the U.S., China and more than 50 other nations. The 15-year deal seeks to cap emissions through a system requiring airlines to purchase credits to offset emissions growth beyond 2020.

The draft resolution was adopted Friday by the Civil Aviation Organization’s governing council, said Anthony Philbin, a spokesman for the agency. He declined to provide details of the measure, which has not been released publicly.

Earlier versions of the agreement called for mandatory participation for some nations, based on the size of their economies and airline industries. Yet officials struggled to agree on where to draw those lines. Instead, they devised a system that would be voluntary for the first six years. Beginning in 2027, most nations would be required to participate, according to the U.S. official.

Annie Petsonk, who has tracked the effort for more than a decade for the Environmental Defense Fund lobby group in New York, said the accord’s success hinges on whether it can draw enough nations to cover 80 to 90 percent of emissions.

Officials still need to finalize details of the accord. That includes how to balance responsibility between the large slow-growing airlines responsible for most current emissions and smaller carriers, mostly from developing nations, poised to grow.

To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Ryan in New York at jryan173@bloomberg.net, Mathew Carr in London at m.carr@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Stephen Cunningham, Susan Warren